Only few people remember a winter as the one lived this year in Galicia. After a total of seven alerts in the coast for strong winds and rains and an accumulated precipitation of more than a thousand liters per square meter, this year was qualified by the professionals as the hardest one of the latest.
But bad things do not last forever and finally we had a truce. Three weeks in which we enjoy spring times and that allowed our associates finishing the works of winter.
The spring arrives to the vineyards and starts now bud break phase, in which the first buds start to come out in the vines; they will give us in some months the 2014 vintage.
Those vineyards in which the prune was carried out sooner, among November and December 2013, are the ones that already show that beginning of the bud break and in which an increase of the vegetal cover of the ground starts to be noticed. Precisely this vegetation that is growing now will help eliminate the excess of the water of the winter, will improve the quality of the ground and will help the control of the vigor of the vineyards.
Although it is not an extended practice, Bodegas Martín Códax encourage the use of vegetal covers since it is a sustainable practice and whose profits affect directly the improvement of the quality of the grape.
Thus in these months, the work carried out in the vineyard is focused in the management of the ground: control of the vegetal cover, fertilization…
At the end of April, with the buds already more full-grown and the increase of the temperatures, we will have to start to put special precaution for the appearance of possible illnesses, but not for the moment.
Miguel Tubío. Dtor. Viticultura Bodegas Martín Códax.
